


Down On The West Coast

by DannisonDrables



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Human, Basically Always a girl Scott and Stiles, Besides Boyd and Erica, F/F, MERMAID STILES, Magic Stiles, Music
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-07
Updated: 2014-12-08
Packaged: 2018-02-28 11:00:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2729954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DannisonDrables/pseuds/DannisonDrables
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It started with killing a fish and her guppies swimming around in her hair. And suddenly there is a leg haver in the water, the ocean song dies and Stiles... Stiles well she's in trouble because she wants this leg haver... in fact, she loves her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Ocean Songs Played For Us Alone and then Just Me.

**Author's Note:**

> This is me getting into the swing of things again and I'm nice and warmed up. I know I wrote out a lot of descriptive scenes about music in the ocean. This fic was powered by James Vincent McMorrow and his heavenly sinful voice that makes my lady boner come on full force. The beginning of this fic was written to the enchanting sound of James McMorrow's song Red Dust as well as the track Gold. When Scottie is introduced the track playing is Look out by the same artist and then Glacier and when Scottie is exiting the scene and the chapter is ending it's James McMorrow's cover of West Coast by Lana Del Rey. Hope you take the time to read it with the music so you can feel what I felt writing it. Hope you love it and please leave feed back.

                 Stiles dived deeper, her body bending and twisting through the reef around her as light from the sun filtered down in dancing patterns that made her eyes seem to shatter, tracking them in all different directions and not knowing which one to chase. She loved the sea. The currents bent her body like children’s hands brushing against her for attention, begging to be played with. The fish swan around the end of her tail, twisting around her fins delicately and rushing after her as she moved forward through the forest of colored fauna.  The others in her pod had said she was broken in the mind and infected in the soul but it wasn’t anything like that. For Stiles… she could hear the ocean, hear it so loud in her ears. And the ocean was music.  
                She took off, her tail powering her further down where the light faded and the creatures of the forever came out to light up and glow around her. She felt her body change, felt her blood thicken and her heart harden and pump faster to support her the cold temperatures. Her pupils took up the space of her eyes and the scales on her body too became like garnered steel her excess arrangement of fins laying down against her body, no longer floating freely and sashaying with her movements and the edges of them began to glow the vibrant red sapphire, setting off her porcelain white skin that seemed to light from within. She was a beacon.  
                Down here the whale songs mingled with the thunderous erratic beat of waves from above as they traveled down, bouncing off the walls of underwater chasms and making hollow noise in air filled caved to create a beat that was so alive, natural and wild that it took hold of Stiles’ body, she bent and twisted around, twirling and flipping with the non-music that was like the flex and static of a field of jellies. It was electric. A pod of whales swam above and their song blended in harmoniously, so well that Stiles had to sing along, a shrill high soprano like the sound of a traffic whistle flowing in-between their aching base notes. She loved her home.                
                The ocean quieted though, like it was listening for something, and Stiles felt the flash go through the water, the pulse that ordered her home. She snapped her tail, pushing herself out of the wide chasm in one flick. The music changed the closer she got to home, a soft beat like the plucking of oyster shells with metal, a click that was metallic and soft. It beat slowly, smooth, romantic and jazzy with the shake of sand turners and the cooing of her people who communicated in song. Tones of singing and soft signs, high falsettos from the men brushing elegantly up against their significant others and the breathy trill of the ladies that twisted away, always playing hard to get, but those singing voices were that of a memory in her mind, she was alone without a pod. Her home, set beyond a ravine where the pod lived, laid in a coral reef with high branches of ivory and green. In the shallows her fins returned to normal. Her fin structure was a kin to a male Beta Fish, all wide fins that were loud and playful that were a luminescent sapphire red with clashing splashes of varying shades of blue throughout her fins, much like her.  
                She weaved artfully through the reef until found her spot, a little natural cave underneath the reef where small fish liked to hide from their mothers. She shooed them away and then twisted inside to see what the damage was, not seeing any reason for her senses to call her back home on the outside. Her cave was littered with pages and scrolls she’d found over the course of her life, things that fascinated her and called her to pour over them again and again. Her attention waned slightly when she suddenly felt the pang again that said her small paradise was in trouble, more immediate trouble. She looked around frantically, afraid she’d see a shark blocking her one exit. There was nothing… and then she heard it.  
                The sound of a motor through the shallows where the reef grow tall and threatened to break the surface. The boat cut through the water like a knife threatening to steal life. Stiles blood boiled and froze all at once. She chirped loudly through the water warning all the fish away as hooks were dropped. No one usually came out this far, it wasn’t usual that Stiles had leg havers close to her home, and usually she liked spying on them, but these ones were too close. If they got out of the boat and dived…  
                “Oh no.”  
  
                Stiles swam through the water and closed her eyes in sadness as she plucked the large female puffer into her arms and began to coo to it. Sacrifices had to be made to protect the reef… Stiles had tears in her eyes as she latched the fish onto the hook after breaking her in half at the middle, not breaking skin just the bone. She tugged the line hard and watched as the fish was pulled up quickly. She heard the excitement from the leg walkers, felt the water vibrate with the thumping of feet against the hall of the small boat and the sound of cheers. She had been a big healthy fish, she would be enough for them. Sadness leeched the water with its scent and Stiles’ gills opened and quivered with it. She wheeled around and saw the small baby puffers swirling around blindly in a panic, trying to find the mother Stiles had just stolen from them. She cheeped loudly out into the water and spread her arms when she had their attention. They flocked to her, nestling into her long brown hair and hiding in it, all bloated in distressed. Stiles curled her long seven foot tail up and wrapped it around herself to protect them. She would be their mother now, they would have one another.  
                She wasn’t paying attention, lost in her shame, when a loud splash broke the water’s surface. A leg haver had fallen in. The fish scattered, the current stilled, the music stopped along with Stiles heart, and she watched.                  
                The girl was tall and slender with long arms and legs and black hair that seemed to curl into large coils in the water. Her skin was olive toned and her eyes were an almost black brown and they reminded Stiles of the baby otters she played with as a little girl. The girl twisted around in the water, pin wheeled her arms until she was right side up and laughed into the ocean and Stiles heard a symphony that was bluesy and lovely with the snaps of fingers and the sexy swish of tails in the water on a three beat with two counts of silence that brought out wave after wave of anticipation and desire. She cooed softly in a falsetto that timbered out in a whine of distress. She’d never felt this way before.  
                The girl straightened and looked up, both her and Stiles hearing the male voice shouting down for her.  
                “Scottie!” It shouted, the voice was deep and anxious. “Scottie.”  
                The girl must have heard him because she kicked her feet and began slowly moving towards the surface. Stiles didn’t dare move her gills, even as the ocean song turned sad as the girl went away. Pangs of waves like cymbals crashing down one after another and the repeated echo of a soft oooh sound, mournful and quick then stretched out long at the end. Stiles didn’t know why… but she would miss her.  
                And then she looked back. The beautiful girl with the otter eyes, ink black hair the color of the deepest trenches and skin the color of pale sand in the sunlight looked back down at the world she could never belong and saw Stiles who was bare from the waist up. Her skin flushed and her heart played strange games to a beat she didn’t know could tap itself out inside of her body and the water filled with pheromones. The girl, apparently Scottie, blinked her eyes once… twice… a third time. Stiles tracked the movements of Scottie’s eyes as they tracked the progression of the red the colors her cheeks, traveled down her neck slowly and dipped between the hollow of her breasts that stood out openly. Scottie’s full mouth parted and Stiles watched the human in the water, the way her long exposed legs kicked back and forth and her strange toes seemed to curl and uncurl. Her upper legs were ample and meaty almost with muscle and it made Stiles’ fingers twitch. The thing she wore over her upper body was sliding up in the soft current exposing a firm stomach with slight muscle definition and the ‘v’ shaped lines that led lower into the bottom covering and Stiles’ eyes fastened themselves to the thin artful trail of hair below the abdomen hole and she wanted and it ached and she didn’t know what to do. Her chest heaved as her body heated up further and that must have triggered something in the human girl because she sucked in a breath… and then began to choke.  
                She struggled up the surface, her fingers broke it, and Stiles watched as two large black hands broke into the water and snatched her out.  
                And Stiles was still in the water, alone.  
                The boat drove away after a minute.  
                Stiles tried to swim after it until it reached the harbor.  
                She waded as close as she dare, praying those eyes would see her again.  
                They never looked back.  
                It started to rain.


	2. Scottie, Sports Bras and perfect Wallowing.

The sand was cold against Scottie’s legs, damp still from the tide but she couldn’t find a care. Her hair dripped from having just gotten out of the shower and made dark spots on her large gray sweater she wore open over her black sports bra. Her hair whipped against her face in the ocean gale that blew in cold air. She was lost. Lost in the sigh of moonlit skin speckled randomly with moles, lost in the sight of a tail so beautiful that gems crumbled at the sight of it and the sun was the second most vibrant thing in this world. She was transfixed on the way warm mahogany hair swirled through the water and fins quivered and trailed in an endless flick and pull. The way that she seemed to sing like some aquatic bird with coos and chirps and whistles in quick alternating rhythms like apes. The way that scarlet leached from beneath the skin and how it poured down from her face into her graceful neck and down around her-   
                Scottie’s breath shuddered and she squinted as the sun broke out from behind the clouds. It wasn’t real.  She’d just broken up with Jackson because of these feelings and of course she’d been holding her breath for a long time down there, longer than she had ever before… But she’d seen her right away.   
                Scottie shook her head and put it to rest on her knees, staring down at the grains of sand between her thighs. She felt this emptiness, this ache inside of her that seemed to grow with the way the ocean hit the shore, reminding her she couldn’t get back there, back under water where the world was quiet and she didn’t have to put on labels and didn’t have to pretend she was something she wasn’t. She wanted that girl to be real, wanted to curl her arms around her waist and kiss her full bitten lips and feel her hair brush against her. She wanted, and that was the worst problem, because she wanted something that didn’t exist…  
                It couldn’t.   
  
                Scottie nearly screamed when she was jabbed in the back roughly. She whipped around to find Isaac and Boyd standing behind her looking worried. The fall had happened three days ago and her mom had kept her out of school for two days because her asthma was acting up bad after nearly drowning. She was feeling better today though and had just walked out of her house, bike keys in hand and lacrosse stick strapped to her back with her pack when Jackson had driven by her house with the window rolled down, his face set into a hateful sneer. She attempted to life a hand and wave but just laughed along with… Allison was in the front seat with him. That had been nice to see. She now just felt like shit and had ridden her bike to the beach, totally forgetting she was supposed to give Isaac a ride to school like she always did.   
                “Isaac I’m sorry, dude.” She hefted herself up out of the sand and dropped her hoodie, shrugging into the tank top she’d taken with him before picking up her hoodie and putting it back on.   
                “It’s okay.” He smiled and shrugged, sidling up close and hugging her from the side, steering her back up to the road. “You can drive me the rest of the way.” He joked and she laughed.  
                “Sure thing.”  
                “Hurry up!” Erica shouted from the car, half her body out the window and literally shaking her fist. She may have been still recovering from her last seizure but she was still as bossy and impatient as ever.   
                “Boyd, your girlfriend sucks.” Scottie teased, punching him in the arm.   
                “Damn right I do!” She yelled out the window. Boyd choked.   
                Scottie pulled into the parking lot of Beacon  Hills Highs twenty minutes later, Isaac behind her on the bike still awkwardly trying to figure out where to put his hands even when they were no longer in motion. “Isaac.” Scottie grinned easy. “Just get off the bike, bro.”   
                “Yeah definitely.” Isaac hopped off and walked over to join Boyd and Erica on the stairs with Scottie a couple steps behind him. Erica was glued to Boyd like she always was and Scottie knew he secretly loved it. Isaac stood between the two of them and Scottie looking happy as a clam and she was ruffling his hair when she heard that overly familiar voice that sounded like the last two years of her high school career.   
                “So glad you don’t dress like that, Babe.” Jackson was saying overly loud, followed by an obnoxious laugh. “That fucking dyke couldn’t ever look half as sexy as you.”   
                “That fucking-“Erica began but Scottie waved her off.  
                “Don’t. Please don’t Erica. He’s going to make a bigger scene if you try to stop him.” She knew Jackson like the back of her hand. Knew the seeded underbelly of his personality that was sometimes the only part of him there was.   
                She had started dating him the end of their softmore year after they won their first game as Co-captains together. She’d been too excited, her mom screaming in the crowds for her with a huge sign that read “THAT’S MY GIRL #11” on a white poster board painted in Maroon. Jackson had looked out into the stands to see if his parents were there and Scottie had seen his face when he couldn’t find them so she jumped on him and hugged him a little too tight and a little too longer especially with her skin sweaty and her breath still heaving from exertion. He’d looked at her with huge eyes and his jaw slack when she’d hopped down and she almost regretted it until he had laughed and grinned and slung his arm around her shoulder and she felt special to someone for the first time.   
                The next day he didn’t go back to ignoring her. He sat with her at lunch to the surprise of her friends and had bonded with Erica right away over a mean streak they both shared, his longer than hers. They’d spend hours lying in bed cuddled close because Jackson was secretly clingy and liked being held. She really had loved him, and still did. But when junior prom came and he had offered her the room he rented and she’d turned him down he questioned her about it. They had don’t stuff together before, Jackson had went down on her numerous of times and fingered her as well so she was thoroughly no longer a virgin. He must have recalled this as well because when he brought it up she didn’t have an answer to give him. When he asked if she was a lesbian and she did have an answer he had an issue. The biggest one being that her answer was “I don’t know… Maybe?” with tears in her eyes and her hands shaking because she saw it come over his eyes. This cold reptilian look that meant distance and distaste and disappointment.   
                Summer had been rough, and they had tried, she had tried. She invited him to the beach and they made out a lot but his heart wasn’t there. When they went on dates his phone was always out and he no longer came over to cuddle with her and it hurt. What hurt worse was Scottie was realize how accurate Jackson had been. It happened slowly and then hit her like a train. She didn’t find guys attractive. She didn’t like how strong they looked, didn’t liked their big heads or strong jaws or short hair or how they always seemed to breathe loudly even. She would have given anything for Jackson though because she knew how much she was hurting him even if he’d never say it. She knew she was breaking her promise to never leave her alone. At the end of summer she had texted him and asked him to get a Slurpee with her because if she was going to simultaneously come out, break up and break her own heart she was going to do it with a blueberry Slurpee in her hands… the extra big king size. With the spoon straw combo. And a bag of salt-n-vinegar chips that no one had to know about if she finished them in one setting.   
                “I have things to do.” He’d said when he had gotten out of the car and sat down with her on the park bench near the convenience store.  
                “It’s not that much… I’m sorry, for prom. It’s not fair that I let you think I wanted things like that… I didn’t know I wouldn’t want to… I thought I would have.” She’d sighed and took a long pull from her big gulp before looking back up at him and yeah she was using the puppy eyes and she knew it and Jackson let his breath leave in a whoosh because she was pretty and pretty girls had those effects on boys.  “I figured it was best if we saw other people because… you were right. I don’t want you in that way. I guess you were also right about the… lesbian… thing. And you deserve someone who can love you in all the ways you need and want. I’m really sorry, Jackson.”  
                “Whatever, McCall. You’re just another freak. Try not to let anyone know we did stuff at all. I don’t want them thinking I could have caught something from a fag” And he had driven off and Scottie had cried into her big gulp and ran home and thrown up and at her chips which didn’t help her stomach while watching Greys Anatomy and it should have been obvious with how hard she shipped Calzona.   
                So she missed Jackson, even now when he was treating her like shit and even after he outed her, she knew why he was acting the way he was acting. Hurt people hurt people. She shared the blame even if she hadn’t had any control over her end.   
                Scottie’s mind was other places, and she could barely focus on her work even though she was trying her hardest to not just be a pretty face in the academics department which was hard enough because her mind was hard wired for physical activity. She knew how to strategize her way through a field of players on instinct and improve alone but Trig wasn’t her strong suit. Or Chemistry…. But every time she’d press her nose into the book and force herself to re-read sentences that she’d missed because of fantasizing her mind would flash with mahogany hair, pink lips, and amber irises or most frequent, a sapphire red tail with flashes of electric blue clashing against it and the sound of her singing.   
                There was no blocking the images out, no replacing them or telling herself it wasn’t real, she was stuck with them in her mind like a music video on repeat. The cacophony of students in the hallways was the only thing that pushed it back. She moved through the people towards her locker to get the books for her next class and when the silence set it she was back to the same thing. Sometimes it would change and the girl… the mermaid would swim towards her, would smile a huge smile that rivaled Isaac and swallow her face until her eyes were squinting and her nose wrinkled and she’d stroke Scottie’s face and coo at her in something rhythmic and dark with a vibrato that filled her eyes with bright lights and tears because it was so happy. And then she’d close her eyes and lean close and Scottie could swear she felt the water move as those soft pillow like lips moved closer to hears and when they touched she felt electricity in her fingertips.   
                Lunch was a much needed break, and Scottie all but ran to their table where Erica was already sitting with Isaac, Boyd still in line getting his and Erica’s food.   
                “Why do you look so flustered?” Isaac asked and bless poor Isaac for not knowing what was appropriate to ask and what wasn’t.   
                “I ran here.” She hedged, eyes in her backpack trying to find her lunch bag. She had her mom’s left over dinner from last night. Refried beans, beef and peppers in a burrito with sour crème and a tub of yellow rice.  
                “Okay yeah but why’d you _run_?” Erica pressed, lips pursed and eyebrow thrown up into her hairline so far that it had to hurt. Scottie shoved a spoonful of yellow rice into her mouth and bit into her burrito and hummed appreciatively while giving puppy eyes and waving her hand in explanation.   
                “Use your words!” Isaac whined.   
                She looked at him so seriously before speaking with her mouth full of chewed up food. “Cau- I cou-n’t wai- -o –ee –ou –uys. –ass wa- -oring.” And then she smiled, rice on her teeth. Erica and Isaac looked sufficiently green so she chewed and swallowed before she choked while laughing and her asthma wouldn’t have appreciated that.   
                “I’m sorry I asked.” Isaac said, pushing away his tuna sandwich. Erica bit into hers out of spite.   
                “How are you doing?” Boyd asked, and the others stopped chatting because it was the unspoken rule that when Boyd asked you something you were going to talk about it because he was Boyd and he doesn’t waist his breath on just anyone and if he asked a question you answered.  
                “Doing with what?” She tap danced, focusing instead on counting the rice in the Tupperware container but she felt his penetrating gaze even without him saying anything. “I mean Yeah I’m okay. Just focusing on a lot of stuff. Hard to focus. I’m gonna go? Yeah.” She got up quickly and was turning to leave the table when she ran into someone, rice spilling on both of them and she’s so damn happy she had her hoodie zipped. The other girl on the other hand. Scottie looked up ready to apologize and found herself face to face with Allison Argent, Jackson’s supposed new girlfriend.  
                “ _Shit_ ” She breathed, Erica echoing her within the same second. Allison looked frozen and unsure of what to do and Scottie had the eyes out, trying to keep everything else from falling in general let alone on the poor girl. She looked around frantically for Jackson and cringed when she saw him walking into the cafeteria that very second.   
                “The fuck, McCall? Just because you see a hot girl doesn’t mean you can try to eat food off her!” Jackson got in her face, his nostrils flaring angrily and Scottie had had it. She let everything fall with a clatter and got nose to nose with Jackson, finger poking into his chest hard like she’d watched her mom do a thousand times to her dad when she was a kid.   
                “You know what, Jackson. You got dumped. You got dumped and your feelings are hurt and that sucks for you.” She actually sounded sympathetic for a second and then she looked at his stupid face. “I’m done being your verbal punching bag. Cut the shit. Or else.” And he knew she could take him down. She was nicknamed legs for a reason.                   
                Jackson got this look in his eyes. The same reptilian look that she had learned meant disaster for someone he hated. And that was it. He hated her. It hurt less than she thought it would. And then.   
                “Aha… Scottie. You think I care what some ugly carpet munching dyke says? No. The only thing I care about is that the girl I broke up with won’t leave me alone. I thought you told me you were a lesbian, or are you just confused?” At the end he pouted his lip and tilted his head in mock sympathy.   
                Then he was on his ass and Boyd was rubbing his knuckles and Jackson’s nose was bleeding and looked broken. Allison looked at Jackson before walking away, shaking her head and met Lydia at the door, the two of them stomping away in heels like they always seemed to do.   
                “Get him out of here.” Erica ordered. She was right, Scottie knew. Boyd would get suspended at least for hitting another student and none of them wanted his chances at a good school fucked for him defending her.     
                Scottie took him out to the parking lot after tossing her keys to Isaac and threatening him with face alone if he hurt her baby.   
                They drove to the beach and made their way to where Boyd’s boat was docked at the edge of the board walk and sat down there beside it, feet dangling over the water. And it was funny she noticed… being close to the water, it was like she didn’t miss the make believe girl so much. This close to the ocean, it was like she could reach out and touch her.


	3. Sinking like a siren that can't swim anymore

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a short chapter but I hate combining to different segments into one. I feel like it takes away from the novelty. But I'm posting four tonight in under an hour. <3  
> DannisonDrables<3  
> PLEASE COMMENT, I'D LOVE TO HEAR WHAT YOU THINK.

The sea was choppy and turbulent like the chaos of her mind, and when sleep finally took her after three days, the ocean currents played the tenor of her nightmares, blackening the sky, shaking the air and chopping the ocean until it looked like Poseidon was enraged.  
                In her dreams, her mother died before her eyes as she had some fourteen years ago.  
                A typhoon had come into the cove, distorting the surface into a myriad of black and electric purple and blue. Her mother was making rounds through the pod, tucking away families and young fish, whispering prayers over the sacred reefs and laying blessings for the stones. This was her job. She was returning when a boat came into the cove, a small vessel with red and blue lights flashing down into the water and a man’s voice screaming down into the surf, calling her mother’s name. Claudentina.  
                She had swum up to the water’s surface, the waves parting for her like the great staffed man in the blood sea. She seemed to sing to the waters and they could calm for her. She was gone for moments before she came back under, turning and looked at Stiles, her small body shivering in fear as she clutched the reef, a large manta at her side fluttering comfortingly against her. Her mother was swimming back when the boat lifted in the wake of the waves and came back down on top of her head.                Blood filled the water quickly and it took but a second for the sharks to catch the scent, driven into the cove by the storm. The pod was loyal, and they fought to keep her safe but there were too many. More people got bit, more blood filled with water. Mothers took children and fled the cove, heading for the chasm to hide in the still quiet of the dark, but Stiles. With no one to protect her, she was left. The manta nudged at her, but her eyes were glued to the image of spreading blood, like a fog or storm clouds descending on her home she screamed her little voice raw, an ear shattering soprano that was answered in return by whales from a great distance. Their answer was the song sung in mourning when one of _their_ pod had fallen. It was like the whole ocean had known that she was no more.  
                It was then that she heard the voice. The voice of the human girl so close to her, whispering in their native tongue into her ear. She sang her name song. _Sahalora, from the sea shore under moonlight. She said her father gave her the name, he wanted her to know who she was always, so that she’d know he was always with her._ Her lips parted and took in water but she stayed beside Stiles, turning her now teenage face from the bloodshed and blowing raw air into her lungs. It screamed down her throat and collapsed her gills and made her body ache with something that was foreign and painfully taboo. She felt raw and exposed and torn asunder.  
                She woke up hearing thunder and the crash of lightning. The small puffers drifted around sleepily above her, never to settle into slumber, she knew how they felt. The sleep had not come with rest and her eyes burned like she’d been swimming in fresh water. She began to travel back, as she had for the last three days. Her body taking the same familiar currents to travel the few short miles to the place where the boats slept.  
-  
                Scottie lay out in the boat anchored in the cove, the sun beaming down on her as she remembered her conversation with Boyd.  
                _“Who is it?” He’d asked, leaning against the post of the dock and rubbing his knuckles back and forth to try and prevent the swelling._  
                She said nothing for the longest time, and then began to speak. “I saw her the day I fell, and I don’t even know if she’s real.” The waves gently rocked the floating dock and she felt tears prick her eyes because she wanted… she ached with want. “I fell into the water and it felt so good, the colors were alive and all I could hear was this singing. This music that belonged to another world and not sounding like any from our own. It was like each grain of sand, each particle of water was carrying the energy from one living thing to the other, communicating and it came out as music. And then I saw her and she fit so perfectly there. All long brown hair and amber eyes. They looked like syrup.”  She laughed to herself and laid her head on her knees, breathing in the ocean spray and letting her mind fill with the image of the mermaid. “Her skin looked like milk and her tail-“Boyd breathed in sharply. “It was the color of rubies in the sunlight with blue fire dancing at the edges and I love her.” Scottie had gasped, had clutched at her heart and began to weep. She felt as if the last pieces of her heart were being forced together under a great pressure and stretched out all at the same time, grasping at everything around them just to hold more. “I have this hole where everything fell out of and she belongs there and she isn’t real Boyd. She’s everything my mind knows I want and so it created her. She’s in my dreams, in my mind when I’m awake. I hear her singing and laughing and it hurts and all I want-“She gasped in air, trying to stifle the sob she felt coming. “All I want is to hold her.”  
                “Then look for her.”  
                “You know it’s not-“  
                “I don’t know anything. Look this world is too big for any one thing to be the entirety of it all. My dad used to tell me stories about a man who fell in love with a mermaid a long time ago when the town was first settled. He was a pirate that sailed the west coast searching for a woman who could withstand his love. My dad said for all of his anger and restlessness he had a love that was too big for any woman to carry. It crushed them and they could never love back the same way and he would always be left with a broken heart. One day he boat got caught in the reef where a family of mermaids lived, and their queen, in anger, leaped from the water to attack the old pirate. What she found though stopped her.  
                “On the front of his great ship he knelt crying out into the heavens. The last of everything he had had was gone. My dad said that it was his grief that sang to her, that let her see his heart and soul and she loved it. It was as big as all the oceans combined. She moved the water currents to hold her aloft and went to carry herself towards him to mend his aching heart with her love for him when he rushed the blade through his ribs and ended his life. She was close though. Close enough to inhale his dying breath in a kiss. She held that breath in, painful and aching in her lungs that hadn’t felt such dry air. She carried it within her and his body deep down into the ocean, past the reef and into a cave where she breathed his last breath back into him. My dad says that it was that breath that brought him back, but not as a man. They lived together beneath the waters for hundreds of years until they swam off together, their children’s children’s children fully grown. They swam into a chasm locked in an embrace that they never released from.” Boyd finally looked at her then. “I’m not saying I know if it’s true, I’m not saying she is real or not. I am saying if you love something, even if it’s just a fantasy, you deserve the chance to experience it in every way.”  
                Silence had lapsed and then he was going to pick up Erica and leaving Scottie to her thoughts. Isaac never came by with her bike and finally hours after sun set she’d walked home.  
                She must have fallen asleep in the warmth of the sun because she woke up with a jolt to the sound of splashing.


End file.
